This Door Swings Both Ways

“This door swings both ways….it goes back and forth.”  Ahhh, Herman’s Hermits. Ya gotta love ‘em.

 

And the door swings on possible treatments to break the cycle of addiction in opioid users. In California (no surprise), there is a new program called “High Sobriety” (I know, it sounds like a Cheech and Chong story) that uses marijuana to treat opioid addiction. As reported, marijuana has always been considered a doorway into addiction, but maybe it’s also a doorway out of addiction.

 

The premise is those who are addicted to highly dangerous drugs like heroin are risking death. If their addiction could be refocused to marijuana, they may still be addicts but they’re probably not going to die from it. Traditional, successful 12-step programs scoff at this. They claim it’s like curing alcoholism by getting someone hooked on hydrocodone. They believe that if you are to treat addiction, then you treat addiction. You don’t merely substitute one substance for the other.

 

But if you can replace a highly toxic drug that can result in death with one that, in and of itself, doesn’t lead to death, isn’t that a positive thing? High Sobriety thinks it is and claims to have hundreds of successes. There’s no way to study this however, since marijuana is still considered Schedule I by the federal government, and studies are banned.

 

So are you strung out or chilled out? Addiction is a brain disease. Can pot reduce the stress and anxiety that causes many addicts to relapse and overdose? Can this door really swing both ways?

 

Call us. We can do better.

 

William Faris, JD
Chief Executive Officer
502-495-5040
william.faris@omca.biz
www.omca.biz

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